Three-dimensional machining of components (subsequently referred to as workpiece) is increasingly gaining importance in manufacturing, especially for welding of near net shape components or for trimming and paring down components after a re-forming procedure.
Especially in cases in which the surfaces or contours of a workpiece that are to be machined with a laser beam are not located within a plane (subsequently referred to as 3D contours), the use of buckling arm robots, the motion sequence of which can be freely programmed, offers considerable freedom of design, accompanied by lower capital expenditure and acceptable manufacturing accuracy.
In the power range above 1 kW, machining of 3D contours of a workpiece by means of buckling arm robots and a laser beam is carried out predominantly by solid-state lasers (YAG, diode or fiber lasers). Laser beams of this type of laser can be guided to good advantage even over a length of several meters through a fiber optic cable comprising one or a plurality of optical fibers, which obviously opens up the opportunity to guide the laser beam via a fiber optic cable to the robot hand on the outside of the robot arm, in which robot hand a machining lens system for focusing the laser beam onto the workpiece is disposed.
Regardless of whether the laser radiation exiting from a laser source is guided via only one optical fiber or via a plurality of optical fibers that are assembled in a fiber optic cable, laser radiation is here intended to refer to a laser beam with a beam axis.